A business blog is an important and integral component of inbound marketing. While there are plenty of business blogs from B2B marketing consultants (including this one), industry portals and vertical search engines, there aren’t too many from manufacturers and industrial companies.
Manufacturing marketers do understand the value of a business blog for thought leadership, search engine optimization (SEO), lead generation and community building but proving its ROI has been a challenge. As a result, many of them either ignore blogging as a marketing strategy or wait until their competition launches one.
It is easy for us marketing consultants to extol the virtues of a business blog but clients want to see actual examples before accepting our recommendations on blind faith. They need to see verifiable results and not just screen shots in our online portfolios.
I found three industrial blogs that have produced measurable ROI in terms of lead generation and sales – key performance metrics that resonate with the C-suite.
Here’s proof that business blogging is an effective inbound marketing strategy for manufacturers, engineering and industrial companies.
Exhibit #1: Emerson Process Management Experts
A niche business blog run by Jim Cahill that targets process manufacturing engineers and professionals.
I had the privilege of listening to Jim and Deborah Franke talk about their fascinating journey from blog awareness (2004) to launch (2006) and how they persevered despite resistance and lack of support from upper management.
Exhibit #2: Indium Corporation Blogs
Indium Corporation is a developer, manufacturer, and supplier of specialty alloys, solder products and solder paste. Rick Short, Indium’s Marketing Communications Director and the chief corporate blogging strategist, manages 73 blogs written by 14 in-house bloggers, all engineers.
Exhibit #3: Kinaxis Supply Chain Expert Community
Kinaxis is a supply chain management solutions provider based in Ottawa. They have been blogging since 2005 and are now reaping phenomenal results. What Kirsten Watson, Director, Corporate Marketing and her team at Kinaxis have achieved is the quintessential success story of blogging and social marketing by an industrial company.
NOTE: Don’t miss their hilarious section called “Suitemates,” a satirical look at the practices of big enterprise software companies.
Here’s a one of their videos from YouTube.
[youtube width=”524″ height=”320″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwG94SUIIOI[/youtube]
I am sure there are many more out there that I didn’t find. Do you know of other business blogs from industrial companies? Feel free to add them here.
Let’s chat to determine if this will be a good fit for both of us. It will be a friendly conversation to get to know each other better, not a high-pressure sales pitch.
business directory says:
Nice post .Thank’s for this post.
boonanan@supply chain says:
Many industrial companies are trying to make blog to pitch products to customers in friendly way. Some of them are trying to do guest post to related blogs as well.
ubu@small business crm software says:
I’m not sure if Kinaxis blog includes topic about crm software.
James Woods says:
We have been running an active blog twice a week for the last year and have seen an increase in traffic, but little in the way of active discussion as a result of the blog.
Every other blog is a tech Q & A relating to tech support emails, and the rest either review certain functions of our platform as it relates to real world usage or broad industry discussion about thin client management, virtualization, centralization, and industrial integration.
Feel free to check it out:
http://blogs.thinmanager.com/thinclients/
Larry Chrzan says:
Thanks for this post about manufacturing/industrial blogs. I would not agree with the statement “there aren’t too many from manufacturers and industrial companies.” I work with 5 manufacturers that have active blogs running for 5 years or more, all in the greater Philadelphia area. Of course, we advised them to do these blogs too! All of them get a lot of good quality traffic and provide good measurable results.
Paula Hynes says:
We’ve been aggressively blogging for about a year now with a focus on trends in American made products. We know that consistent content does make a difference, but as state above, it is not an overnight process. While, I can’t directly relate our efforts to a specific sale, we did host a visit from President Obama in November. The benefit for industrial companies can be measured in other ways such as brand recognition, thought leadership etc.
I always enjoy reading your posts Achinta. Keep up the insightful work in 2013 and Happy New Year.
Bolas says:
There are some of other blogs with proven roi. I hope these blogs much better than all other blogs. Good to know about industrial companies.